WenZink said:
WMB's 2012 wOBA of .357 in 268 MLB plate appearances, or his wOBA of .461 at AAA in 2012 before he was brought up to the major leagues are better than anything Cecchini has in his resume. The question is can WMB make the proper counter-adjustments to what MLB pitchers are offering him. If he can the payoff is huge, and if he can't then the Sox have to look for alternatives. But Cecchini has yet to show he is a satisfactory alternative. In about a quarter season at AAA he's posting a wOBA of around .375 fueled by a very unusual situation where his OBP > than his SLG. That doesn't translate very well to MLB. In another thread, it was found that it was very hard to find hitters with consistently high wOBA at the ML level. Eddie Yost, from the 1950's was the only one I could find.
At the MLB level pitchers with just 10% better command aren't going to give Cecchini as many opportunities to walk, since, even if he hits the ball, it's likely to be a single (Just 7 or 8 XBH in a quarter of a season.) So, as Cecchini stands now, he has to increase his power (or his SB rate) in order for the Sox to "afford" a hitter of his profile at 3B, OR beefo up the rest of the lineup. (30 less walks per season might result in 10 more hits of which 8 would be singles and 2 would be doubles. (if a hitter can sustain a .333 BAPIP) and 20 more outs, And using the average coefficients of any given yearly wOBA forumula (0.69-BB, 0.885-1B, 1.25-2B), a hitter with Cecchini's offensive components is going to see a lower wOBA EVEN if he is able to sustain his full set of batting skills moving from AAA to the MLB level.) So, unless Cecchini is the type of LH hitter that can drive balls off the Green Monster, or projects to maturing into having more power, he's not anywhere near what the Sox hope WMB can be, based on his 2012 season. That doesn't mean that WMB can make the adjustments necessary, but he's still a far more attractive bet at 3rd base than Cecchini.
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I think you're either not reading all the threads where Cecchini is being discussed or completely misremembering the number of comparables that are in those threads. The list is certainly longer than Ned Yost. Below, I will repeat two additional very close comparables that I found and posted about earlier, in case you missed those the last time.
But before those anecdotes, the bigger picture. In my opinion, you are using far too narrow of a screen in focusing on OBP > SLG for 2 reasons.
First, Cecchini's OBP is only greater than his slugging for the half season of AA and first 1/4 of a season of AAA. His career minor league SLG is .449, and his highest slugging percentage was at high-A Salem, in a pitchers' league, at an age-appropriate 22 years old. Thus, his SLG has not steadily declined as he moved up the levels of A ball as you might expect if better pitchers were going to expose him. Moreover, McCoy is not a hitters' park, and it's been freakin' cold and wet all spring. See Dustin Pedroia's lack of power over the first 6 weeks. So, the entire basis of your discussion could easily be a small sample size fluke.
Second, Cecchini's OBP in his 3/4 of a season of AA and AAA is FOUR-FIFTEEN. So, by employing a screen of OPB > SLG, you're starting from a huge OBP. If Cecchini had a still lofty and exciting OBP of .395 in AA as a 22-year old, then his OBP would have been lower than his slugging and you wouldn't be having this discussion. Moreover, at least to date, there has been no dropoff in OBP from AA to AAA, whereas for a player like, David Eckstein, his OBP dropped from .440 in AA to .356 in AAA. He also then basically maintained that ~.350 OBP throughout his major league career.
Therefore, I would say a better way to go about your screen is to say, "What has been the typical dropoff from minor league to major league OBP of players who had ~.390 SLG in AA/AAA."
And, now for the anecdotes. At a minimum, I suggest you update your list of comparables to include Dave Magadan, who had a an OBP/SLG split of .441/.356 in AA as a 22 year old, and a .411 / .412 split in AAA as a 23 year old, then had a 15-year major league career ending with a .390 / .377 split. And he had no speed at all, whereas Cecchini looks like he will be guy with decidedly positive baserunning WAR.
Looking up Magadan's list of comparables, brings up Steve Braun, who as a 22-year-old in A+ ball had a 397 / 377 split, then jumped all the way to the majors and posted 5 seasons of with an average OPS+ of about 119 from age 24-28 with an OBP/SLG split that was roughly equal. For his major league career, his split was .371/.367; an OPS+ of 109